NO FAR-RIGHT KNIGHT IN 2008? The right-wingnuts are getting quite anxious.  They appear to be facing the 2008 election without a single satisfactorily extreme candidate in the palm of their hand.  How…refreshing.  Seems most Republicans with any sense are starting to figure out that middle America has had just about enough of the far right’s self- righteous wrathful rigidity and its regular vomiting up (and covering up) of its own moral, carnal and fiscal miscreants.  Smarter R’s have been trying to distance themselves from the delusional nutcases masquerading as God’s messengers, and so it’s come to be that the Right finds itself foundering in a sea of moderation without a worthy knight to lead its oppressive charge into the 21st century.  Kind of anti- climactic after all the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric of the late ‘90’s and the smug self-congratulationism that followed the—ahem—installation of this administration in 2000, but here we are. At first glance, it would seem like there’s still no shortage of self-inflating gasbags whose only barometer for correct action is their own vitriolic rationalization.  Such knuckleheads turn up in the press all the time, spouting off some ignorant nonsense as if they’ve actually studied a concept as opposed to having been spoon-fed a sound-byte-sized opinion on it.  And it’s not just the Tim Hardaways and the Ann Coulters and the Reverend Haggards; there are plenty of these blowhards among those elected or appointed to provide for our equal protections and opportunities under the law, too—folks who should provide a whole stable of potential candidates eager to bear the Right’s standard.  But with a lot of the fundies that flap their gums the most, you don’t have to dig too deep to hit a layer of batshit-crazy, and the even the Right-wingnuts don’t want to hitch their wagon to anyone who might detonate before the desired destination is achieved.   Among the remaining possibilities, it’s getting harder to find one extreme enough to suit the extremists.  Bill Frist, once a far-right darling for his ridiculous involvement in the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case, became a lost cause after reversing his opposition to stem-cell research.  It turns out Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair while he was publicly huffing and puffing about Clinton’s moral flaws, and Mitt Romney’s rising star has dimmed since footage surfaced of the 1994 senatorial debate in which he pledged his unswerving support for women’s reproductive rights and stated unequivocally that “I do not impose my beliefs on other people.”   (Which he has, many times, since then in his effort to redeem himself with the Right.  But still.) And while the far Right frantically casts about for a suitably sanctimonious savior to rescue them from science and the homosexual agenda, the void echoes with a dizzying new possibility, one that must strike terror into the shriveled heart-like things that beat in the Right-wingnuts’ chests:  that there may actually be no knight.  That a Republican constituency which once heeled to the shrill rhetoric of biblical literalists has tired of meaningless histrionics that don’t ring true and don’t address the needs of real people.  That the   R’s might actually—gasp—reclaim the party from the fundamentalists who so successfully co-opted it near the end of the 20th century.   Though it’s incredibly hard to believe today, there was a time in America when “Republican” was not synonymous with “militant Christian fundamentalist.” Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and he deliberately filled his Cabinet with people of all different political and philosophical leanings—can you imagine?  And those diverse people together created an administration that sustained the country through its worst crisis ever—a civil war—undivided.  Today, by contrast, we’ve got a Cabinet of nearly-identical golem acolytes sculpted from the same clay as their self-ordained father Bush, yet we can’t get through breakfast undivided. But now that the Right is sifting through the lint in its empty pockets, there might actually be a relatively moderate front-running R in 2008, a candidate who may differ from his opponents in personal belief and political approach but who is not deluded with visions of himself as the divinely appointed messenger of any god or doctrine.  A candidate who might find climate change, inadequate healthcare and substandard education more worrisome than the “gay agenda.”  A candidate who might ably debate the merits of an idea without dragging anyone’s theology into the discussion.      After a decade or so with the Right at the wheel careening around like it owns the road, mainstream Republicans have finally come to a tacit understanding with the left-of-centers trapped in the backseat with them—the  ’08 election is the intersection just ahead, and we’re all bailing out.   ###